Boreal Meltdown

Earth’s
Hotspots a cause for concern

“Further
global warming of 1oC defines a critical threshold.
Beyond that we are likely to see changes that make Earth a different
planet than the one we know”, says

Jim
Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies
in New York. Hansen and colleagues have analysed global temperature
records and found that surface temperatures have been increasing on
an average of 0.2oC every decade for the past 30 years.

Alaskan
springs are now two weeks earlier allowing plagues of moths to eat
all the needles of entire forest regions in one summer. The trees
die and then usually succumb to forest fires that destroy soil
vegetation and accelerate the melting of the permafrost.

In 2003 Siberia
there was a record number of forest fires losing 40,000 sq kms.

Similar changes are
occurring in Alaska…warming there has shortened the life cycle
of the bark beetle from two years to one, causing huge infestations
and subsequent fires which destroyed huge areas of forest in 2004. ”